Is it possible that the three levels of difficulty might be somehow built into the lore of the game, so that they are part of the overall progression of the story arc rather than solely higher challenge levels?

They might for example, be different dimensions individuated by a small change in the palette hue if such were possible. These planes or dimensions might act as staging posts between Earth and the origins of the Chthonians and Aetherials. I'm aware that there are already extra-planar landscapes planned but the intention here is to elongate the story arc to include the various difficulty levels.

In TQ it is Normal, Epic and Legendary and so I'll use this terms for ease of reference. Perhaps there could be a unique quest or two in Epic and again in Legendary that only exist at those levels. Similarly there might be unique bosses or some of the extra monsters planned could exist only at these higher levels. I was going to suggest that some side quests in Normal level be removed from the higher difficulty settings to aid in trying to achieve a sense of uniqueness for each individual tier but this may prove unnecessarily time consuming and difficult.

Perhaps there could be slightly different endings or objectives for each difficulty level also.

I am fully aware that I have no idea of the complications and difficulties that implementing any of these suggestions might cause but thought I would ask anyway and expose my ignorance.

I somehow like this, too, but I think this requires a different approach to the system of difficulty levels ... anyway, here is the news ... ahem, the official feedback:

Quote:

Originally Posted by medierra

As I mentioned in one of the other threads, the majority of players will probably only play through the game on normal difficulty once. Then there are people who will play through normal a couple times with different builds. Only a very small % of the audience will play through Epic and Legendary. I think a large portion of the audience would be incredibly frustrated if the game was paced out so that you had to play 40hrs and go through legendary difficulty to finish the main story. [...]

Quote:

Originally Posted by medierra

[...] Well, the simple answer is that, no, it isn't really worth it. I think people have started to take the additional difficulty modes for granted as a core part of the game and want to see bonus content added to them when, the additional difficulty modes ARE the bonus content. [...]

The statistics I've seen from publishers indicate that the majority of players only play through Normal difficulty once or twice. It is only a small percentage of players, that ever go beyond Normal, for which we're creating all this extra content (I'm one of those types of players but I don't replay the game for the quests). It just isn't financially viable for us to invest much more time than we already are in creating more extensive bonus content for a single game. New quests, levels and enemies need to be delivered in the form of an expansion pack that will also extend Normal difficulty content for the majority of the audience. If we don't get a reasonable financial return for the work we're doing, we won't be able to stay in business very long.

Quote:

Originally Posted by medierra

[...] In terms of content, as I said before, the higher difficulties ARE the bonus content and they already do include additional content like items, new enemy types and the continuation of character development. It is possible that we may go beyond this, as time allows, but I think it is wrong to expect it. Personally, as a player, I've always enjoyed the additional difficulty levels in games as a way to keep playing with an added challenge. They exist for hardcore players that just want to keep playing with an increasing challenge, largely to see if they can do it and test their character build against the game.

If what you're looking for is to keep playing a whole new game, then what you really need is an expansion. We can't just ship 3 games in one and hope to make any reasonable compensation for our work, especially given that the base price is already only $20. Even if we did, next people would just be complaining, "After the first time you play through all three difficulties, they're just the same on the second play-through! WTF is this crap?! Stupid lazy devs!"

On the other hand, we have put a lot of effort into new randomization features and designing levels and gameplay in such a way that players will have somewhat different experiences on each play-through. So, I think this goes part-way to satisfying people's desire to see something different in higher difficulty modes. We may even be able to implement some form of random questing, which might be a good compromise for people wanting all new quests. It won't be all new story-quests but it will be something.

I somehow like this, too, but I think this requires a different approach to the system of difficulty levels ... anyway, here is the news ... ahem, the official feedback:

... your ignorance is totally appreciated

In the answer to anything content wise I think the best choice is to simply give modders the tools to do whatever because that small percentage is probably the same people who will do whatever it takes to make the game fit them. Beyond that I think unique names for the difficulties that tie into the game itself for immersion is the step to take.

Something I posted in another thread. I themed it in such a way that it was like a continuous story each difficulty. Love your idea!

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeyondSpectrality

Personally I like;

Coma-You're new to Grim Dawn and you're just waking up in the world of Cairne to find the world in ruins. You must start your journey to become a hero of the human race and save your people from extinction.

Survivor-You've been surviving in the Aetherial warped wasteland for awhile now, but have only ventured out for supplies. With your experience you must now brave the carnage and fight against the the legions of two warring juggernaughts to help humanity survive.

Veteran-You've been battling the hellish hoardes for awhile, but now you must face their armies head on if humanity has any chance of survival.

Maelstrom-Prepare yourself for the idea of death, no matter how much experience you have gained wondering this broken world, the armies ahead will be complete pandemonium.

eisprinzessin - You are most certainly the Minister of Information, thanks for taking the time to share Medierra's specific thoughts on some of the issues raised.

Steam's achievement statistics are particularly interesting, being publicly available, as they do give some indications that very few people complete any game or even get halfway through. However, arpgs probably have as high a completion and replay rate as any genre. If Grim Dawn at release is perhaps the size of Greece in TQ I estimate initial normal playthrough of roughly 10-15 hours. In TQ it takes me approximately 30 hours not including Immortal Throne. So I expect to be doing a little more exploration of the higher difficulty levels by way of fleshing out content and exploring the upper levels of the skill trees - the relative shortness of the game presumably will not let me get very far into the skill trees. It is largely for these reasons that at first release, players will, more than they might have done in TQIT, replay at higher levels.

i like where you are going with these beyondspectrality. dunno if i would call the first setting 'coma' though. in german i'd say 'unbeschriebenes blatt' which seems very fitting, dunno if clean slate/tabula rasa translates that well...